THE APIARY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3888, 18 September 1928, Page 11

THE APIARY.

By

J. A.

THE TWO-QUEEN SYSTEM. •A f ° rtn - lgbt ago t,lis subject was dealt 7* ex l’erience of Mr Wintie, and at that time the promise was made to revert to it. there are two main objects to be attained in the use of this system. One is the requeening of the hive by retaining in th2 U « g which may be described in the first instance as an assistant and LIL. a i aucc . e ? s <>r to the queen which nnr^ni d 4 he . h *7 e ’ In that case important that the assistant queen should be reared from good stock, for as soon as P? me c , omes , when the young bees wonfl r f are d under the two-quecn system t be to ° late for the harvest it M * neaessa ,r y f or economy’s sake to take away the old queen, thus leaving X n « r Ol ] e - in f ? 11 control of the colonj. Ihe object, then, is to rear a L°J lng qUe - en from good stock to assist the nf n„ e i 111 building up the population * he h 7 e an r d , later t 0 make her the mother of the colony. Ihe other object in this system is, of - t0 - bu,k l UP the colony more rapidly in view of the main honey harvest. Io help beginners in this matter it may be as well to remind them that the life ot the worker is only six weeks. If the young beekeeper introduces an Italian queen into a black colony he will find three weeks later that the first of the jellow queens progeny is just beginning to hatch while the last cells of what nas laid by the old queen will have opened At this time all the bees in the colony will be black. If the hive is examined again in six weeks it will be *° U i n +L the black bees are gone an< no , w tbe Italian queen's progenfr are filling the hive It will be seen from this how quickly changes may come to a colony of bees.

Deficient stores checking the laying of the queen will let the colony run down ■very quickly. On the other hand, if two queens are present, and each able to work to her full capacity, it is marvellous how quickly the hive will fill up with bees. It is, however, absolutely necessary to have correct timing. The time ot clover bloom in Otago and Southland determines this for the south. That may usually be reckoned as beginning about December 15 and lasting till February 15. Very often weather conditions are not settled enough in the last two weeks of December for the best results, but nearly always there are a few dajs that are good. So we may take it that we can plan to have our colonies approaching the peak of condition at Christmas time. If the colonies are to be formed from two swarms, as ) vas , done in Mr Wintie’s case, then probably New Year’s Day will be as late as is worth while uniting them. It is good policy to unite them at that late period, but only under one queen. A second brood nest would only be a useless drain on the colony. Hie point of doubt in tbe system is whether the excluder is an effective division between the two queens. Probably while the flow is strong and the weather warm it would be all right, but I would-fear the -effect of a cold snap just after the colonies had been put together.

Then without a good deal of experiment it would, I think, be useless to put in 'a virgin as one of the queens. It may be said that in a well-managed apiary there should be no swarms headed by a virgin queen, and certainly the less there are of them the better. Still, they do come even under the bet management, and if the young queen is worth saving it will be found better to give her a hive to herself until the queen is laying. While writing thus I would like to caution beekeepers that that excluder division between the two queens is only, in th e experimental stage. I have never tried it, but I have tried and used the Wells system of a perforated division board, and 'I know from that that the bees will store together in tbe supers just as if they had only one queen, and if the excluder proves a success then it simplifies matters very much and promises good results.

Some years ago I tried out a system used by a prominent beekeeper in U.S.A. The main point in it was a combined cover and bottom board. The colony was artificially swarmed, the dividing being delayed as long as the bees could be held together without danger of swarming. The division was made by taking about three-fourths of the brood, with adhering bees and the queen and putting them on top of the old colony with the combined cover and bottom board between. There were thus two queens at work on the one stand, and later, when one of- them was taken away, the bees were reunited under the one queen. It did not receive a fair trial, as I struck one of our poorest seasons; but there were faults in the system which, were quite evident when in operation, and I have not so far gone further with it.